How To Conduct Research That Lays The Foundation For SEO Articles (In Half The Time)

The first part of writing great SEO articles is the research.

Get this wrong, and the article will fail straight away.

But there is an issue.

Your research can take far too long, and in some cases, it takes longer than writing the article itself.

There is a solution, and in this chapter, I will give you the 3 fastest ways to research an article that will save you huge amounts of time.

Let’s get started.

Get Pocket

How to write SEO content for the website? Get Pocket is a way to save anything you find on the internet.

It is the equivalent of creating your private database. As if this wasn’t enough, it will serve up content that you might like as well.

I love articles about SEO, writing, and marketing.

As such, when I go to Pocket, I can either see the articles I have saved or look at the ones they recommend.

These are really useful functions because I get to find content that is suggested to me but also content I have saved on the web for later.

There is another incredible part of Pocket that is worth its weight in gold for all writers.

The Explore function.

This new tool is in Beta development, but I am already using it in my work.

So, for example, I am writing this article and using the exact process I am outlining here as I write (that sounded a lot better in my head than when I typed it).

I went to Pocket and typed in “Headline Writing.”

And voila.

It is like a filter for Google (or a user-based satisfaction tool); because Pocket brings back results based on the number of people that “save an article” you are usually getting great content.

Get Pocket changes the way you research any subject.

Use Blinkist To Utilize The Zulu Principle

Blinkist is a great tool to turn you into a subject expert overnight, and I utilize this to use what is called the Zulu Principle.

The Zulu Principle is a book written on investment by a male named Jim Slater. He noticed that when his wife read an article on the subject of the Zulu people she was remarkably more informed on the subject than he was.

He believed that if his wife read every book on the subject, coupled with a short visit to Africa, she would be one of the leading authorities on the subject.

While Jim Slater used this process for investments, you can use it for content research.

Log into Blinkist (it is a premium service) and type your subject matter into the search bar:

As you can see it brings back a range of books you can read.

Each book takes no more than 15 minutes to read, and they are shortened versions (or blinks) of full books.

As such, you can be super informed in a wide variety of areas in a few hours.

Use Google To Supercharge Your Subject Knowledge For Free

For those of you who are thinking “yeah but Get Pocket and Blinkist cost money,” there is a free way to get the same results.

Google it.

The search engine is designed to bring back the best results, and now we have featured snippets and “people also ask” boxes.

The way I use this is to scroll down the first two pages of Google and look for all the long-form SEO articles around a subject.

I make a note of the pages and the key points of each article.

(Later on, in the article you will learn how to write a fantastic article with this information)

After reading all the best articles on Google, you will have a high level of knowledge on the subject and are ready for the next step.

How To Write An Intro That Gets The Reader Hooked

Just because you managed to gain the click on your article, it does not mean you have a reader.

That click-through is, in essence, the reader saying, "Ok, you have my attention, now show me what you can do."

And so your introduction is going to be key to the success of your article.

Fortunately, there are 3 different methods that I use, and I will walk you through each one.

The Micro-Commitment Method

Brian Dean is known to most as one of the best SEO experts. He founded the SEO training company and blog of the same name.

However, most do not know that he used to be a full-time copywriter.

So, when it comes to the creation of great content, Brian Dean is a fantastic source of information.

He has an incredible way of writing introductions.

He gains a micro-commitment first;

Behavioral scientists have discovered that as human beings we need to be consistent and experts documented this in the book called “The Small Big: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence.”

Inside the book, the scientists talk about how consistency and commitment plays a massive part in social influence.

To demonstrate this, an experiment was run.

On a crowded beach, they had a researcher pose as a swimmer and take a towel and a radio to the beach. The aim was to see how many people would leap into action when the radio was stolen (by a researcher posing as a thief).

On some of the tests, he simply placed his radio and towel on the beach and went for a swim.

On others, he asked a sunbather if they could watch his things while he went for a swim. Most agreed with a verbal “yes I will.”

The results?

Of the times he never asked anyone to watch his things, only 4 out of 20 people who did not make a verbal commitment jumped up to chase the thief.

Compare this to an incredible 19 out of 20 people who jumped up that were asked to watch the items.

How To Create Content That Gets Read To The Bottom

You put in the hard work to get the click with a great headline, and they read your opening and they are onboard.

You have won!

Sorry to break the bad news, but the hard work is really just beginning.

Read on to find out why...

Now you need to create a great article, one that is read all the way down.

And guess what the number-one trick is for this?

Putting no more than 3 or 4 lines in a paragraph.

Why?

Because we do not read things online in the same way we read a book or a newspaper.

In 2008 a study was undertaken to see how we read online and here is what was discovered: Web users have time to only read about 20% of the content on the page when they visit.

If you think about this, it makes sense.

We are all busy people, and we go to Google to find a solution to our problems, so we click on the top search results, and we are looking within that article for an answer.

That is why the subheaders we choose are so important (and planned beforehand); we need each subheader to offer a clear benefit.

If the subheader offers a benefit/ solution to our problem, we are more likely to read this section with better detail.

But it goes deeper than this.

The average reading speed is about 200 words per minute, so we need a way to speed this up if we are going to increase the amount of information we can deliver to the reader.

Enter the world of single line sentences and short paragraphs.

But here is the science part.

We read in an F Shape.

Master blogger Neil Patel writes the above article but you can see that he uses a mixture of short lines, single-line paragraphs and breaks up his posts with images.

As it turns out this is super smart because our eyes scan articles in an F shape.

This means that our eyes do not like to go across the width of a page; it is harder to work, and this increases the time it takes to read an article.

But it also turns out that there are other types of scanning that our eyes use when reading:

The Layer Cake: Where we scan headers and subheaders but do not read the actual text (which shows you need to create great subheaders).

Spotted Pattern: Basically, looking all over the content as if looking for a particular word or answer.

Marking Pattern: This is common with mobile reading; your eyes are fixed on the middle of the screen, and you scroll down.

Bypassing: This is a great one, and it is common. You bypass the beginning of a line because they repeatedly start the same way; in essence, you read from the middle of the sentence.

And finally:

Commitment Pattern: This is the type of reader we all want, the reader who reads it all and devours every line.

So here are some extra SEO content writing tips to help your readers to love and devour your content.

1. Use shorter sentences We know that shorter sentences take less effort to read and this is a good thing because time matters.

2. Use benefit-focused headings/subheadings A benefit-focused headline will encourage the scan readers to stop in their tracks.

3. Break up the article with images Images help to break an article up and make it easier to digest information.

4. Start lines with different words If you use the same words at the beginning of each sentence, your reader will start to miss them out and jump to the middle of a line and miss key information.

5. Try and place your most important points earlier in the sentence Get important information out in every sentence as early as possible. Every line needs to have value, and show that value to the reader.

6. Make the article reader focused Try and speak to the reader in the article by using words like “You” a lot.

Sign up for your newsletterShare the articleCommentAction regarding what the article is aboutRead another articleBuy from you

However, the key is simple – if you want results, give them one single task.

Once you pick the task, you need to get them to take the action you desire.

How?

By turning into the best coach in the world, and for this reason I call this;

The Coach Conclusion

Imagine the situation – it is halftime, and you are down by 3 goals to 1. If you don’t get your team to recover it will all be over.

You have one chance, one speech to motivate them.

You are the coach, and your readers are the team.

This conclusion is the halftime of the game.

So, how do you do this?

You give them a challenge that goes like this:

You can go back to writing content the way you always have. Or you can download this article as a PDF by clicking the button below and use it to create the most fantastic article you have ever written.

An article that inspires those that read it.

An article that makes a difference.

Do you see how much more powerful this is than just saying, “Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed it, please comment below”?

Use your article conclusions as the weapons to get the reader to do something else you want/need them to do.

Noah has a unique format to his blog posts because he takes an interview that he has done via podcast and then turns that into a written power page.

You can choose to either listen to the interview with the embedded podcasting tool or read the post which is packed with the key points.

To create a power page like this one you are going first to need to find someone of note relative to your niche to interview.

Who this person depends on your niche but once you decide you will need to do some outreach to ask them if they would be interviewed.

Although it is totally up to you a template like this might work:

“Hi ####I know you are super busy so I will get to the point.

I think your blog is fantastic and I have been a reader for some time.

I especially love your post on XYZ.

I have a blog of my own, and my readers would love to learn to hear your story, and I wondered if I could interview you for my site and podcast.

I promise this would take no more than 30 minutes of your time.

Anyway if you can fit this in, I would be super grateful.

Thanks in advance.

####”

And from there you need to get the interview done and then create an article from that interview.

Sound Equipment For Interviews

If you are interviewing for a podcast, you are going to need a good microphone.

The sound is a key issue for podcasts, and you want to reduce the “echo” in the room.

Although what equipment you use is up to you, the Rode Podcaster is an excellent microphone for those with the budget.

And for those looking for a cheaper option check out the Blue Snowball Microphone which is excellent:

After you arrange your interview, you are going to need Podcasting software to embed and play your podcast on your site.

Passive income expert Pat Flynn has created a podcast player that starts at a reasonable $8 per month.

Creating Content From Your Podcast

As great as podcasts are, they are not superb for SEO purposes, and this is why Noah Kagan’s method works so well.

It turns the podcast into an article (great for SEO value)

As stated Noah Kagan does not do a direct transcription but takes key learning points which is really useful because it also allows the reader to see if the podcast is worth listening to.

This helps to increase dwell time which as we know is great for SEO.

To create your own Interview page, you should start with a superb headline:

In this example, Noah begins with “A Conversation with one of America’s Best Chefs.”

With any headline, it is essential to be specific as to what the reader/ listener will get.

Tim Ferriss uses the same method as his podcasts;

“How Seth Godin Manages His Life-Rules, Principles and Obsessions” is about as specific as you can get.

Next, you need to include an introduction to the podcast/article.

Both Tim and Noah use what I call “A Scene Setting.”

The idea of the scene setting is to explain just why you should listen to the guest. This is not what you will learn but why you should listen.

Noah starts by telling us how competitive the restaurant industry is and how Tyson Cole managed to launch 7 successful restaurants despite the tough nature of the business.

Tim Ferriss has the same approach with his podcasts, he “sets the scene” as well in his introduction.

After you have written an excellent introduction, you then need to move onto explaining what the audience will learn.

My suggestions are that you use bullet points (Noah does them Taco style)

Tim uses standard bullet points.

After embedding the podcast in you want to add links to the things mentioned in the podcast.

This is great for SEO because of Google update called Hilltop.

Hilltop is a Google algorithm that decides if your page is a hub of information for the user. With all the content spoken during a podcast episode, you can quickly link out to the sources and show Google that your podcast is a hub of info.

Tim Ferris prefers to add a list of links:

And there you have it; interview posts are a fast way to create SEO articles that have depths of value for both readers and listeners.

They are great for SEO because of the “Onpage” dwell time that comes with listening to a podcast.

Please give them a go and see your rankings improve.

3. The Best Of Rocket Content Page

The phrase “the best” tells the reader exactly what they are going to get, the creme de la creme, the top, the elite, the extraordinary.

And this two-word phrase makes for an excellent Rocket content page format.

A great example of “The Best” style Rocket content pages is this “20 best beaches in the world” article.

Packed with photos and descriptions, this polished page looks great, and when we use Ahrefs, we can see that it also delivers results.

With over 1900 backlinks from 249 domains, it ranks for over 4800 keywords and drives 34,000 visitors per month to the website.

Because it is a Rocket content page, you can see just how many keyword variations that this ranks for.

Ranking on the first page for phrases such as a beach, and also beautiful beaches.

To find your “best of” Rocket content page head over to Ahrefs and enter the term “The Best” into their keyword explorer.

Then click on the “having same terms” tab.

Once there you will see a massive list of “the best.” Just insert your keyword/ topic into the include box.

For this example let’s try games.

You will see a list of keywords but don’t let the low volume of these keywords put you off.

As you will see these are usually “treasure chest” keywords that will rank for other things, so find the one you want and then click on it to expand.

When we check the SERPs out for the keyword, we see that the number 2 ranked post “The 25 best ps4 games” ranks for 564 keywords and generates 11,809 organic visitors.

Not bad for a phrase that only generated a few hundred on first glance.

4. The Events Rocket Content Page

A powerful way to gain links and traffic is to create another variation of “The best” style Rocket content page but with a focus on events.

Each year there are thousands of industry-specific events for every type of niche, and by creating a Rocket content page that lists them, you will have incredible success.

Of course, when you start to look at this type of Rocket content Page, you will see a lot of opportunities to create your own.

This music festival list has 20 different festivals listed, but when you check out the traffic levels for the page and links you can see just how powerful this method is.

This single page gains over 14,000 monthly visitors and ranks for over 1500 keywords.

To create your own is very simple.

Find out what the best events this year are in your industry, contact the organizer and explain that you will be promoting their event for free in your new article, get all the details and create your post in no time at all.

Once you have written your post and titled it along the lines of “The Top” or “The Must Go (insert niche) Events in 2018” contact the event organizer.

If they have a blog for the event (which is likely) suggest to them that it might be a good way to get people to buy tickets buy saying “named as one of the top (insert niche) events of 2018.”

From there you get handy backlinks, and your article gets promoted via their social media, so it is a win-win for you.

5. The Project Rocket Content Page

If you have been in Digital Marketing for a while, you will have heard about Survival life.

This was a site that the head of Digital Marketer Lab Ryan Deiss talked about a lot (I believe they owned it).

Survival Life is a content marketer study dream and spending time on the site can give you endless ideas for content.

However one of their best pages is a “project page.”

Project pages are a super way to gain engagement because they translate to a long time value.

The page implies that this is something you can spend a lot of time with and have fun doing.

Their paracord project page has some incredible things going on.

First of all, let’s look at the title.

“36 Awesome Paracord Projects For Preppers”

The number 36 is a large one; you can tell straight away that this will be packed with value.

And then we have the subject “Paracord Projects” which isolates what this page is about.

Finally, we have the subject group “Prepper’s.”

The title is a sheer genius because it creates tension. On the one hand, the Preppers out there will be thinking “great this is for us,” and those in the survival niche who don’t class themselves as preppers will want to take a look to see if they are missing out.

The results of this page speak for themselves:

With over 70 referring domains and 6600 monthly visitors, this Rocket content page is no slouch.

But we see “project style Rocket content pages” more and more if we look closely.

This DIY project page by life hacks gains over 18,000 visitors per month.

Can you create a project Rocket content page for your niche?

If you fancy giving it a go, I would suggest you outsource the work to save time.

To do this, you could create what I call a joint venture project.

My top tip would be to head over to YouTube and search for your niche.

Let’s say that you want to create a project power page on cupcake design.

Start to go down the videos and look for a channel with few subscribers (the big names will most likely charge you for the work or actually steal the idea anyway).

Find a good fit and then head to their channel and click the about page.

Once there you will probably see either a link to a blog or contact details (try and avoid those with blogs for obvious reasons).

From here you can reach out.

They get to create the videos which will be hosted on their YouTube channel, and you can embed them, take the screenshots and create a kick-ass Project Rocket content Page.

Of course, the great thing about this is that if you look hard enough, you do not actually need to get new videos made.

You can create a project page entirely made up of pre-existing videos on YouTube of which we will look at next.

6. The YouTube Cut Up Rocket Content Page

If you are short on time and want to create a fantastic Rocket content page for your niche without sourcing new content, you are in luck. YouTube is possibly the very best research platform on the web, and you can use it to find great content ideas.

However, because YouTube allows you to embed videos in your site, you can create power pages out of other peoples videos.

This Survival life article is a post that is built around a 17 minute YouTube video that is embedded at the base of the page.

For you to do this just head over to YouTube and type in “How To” and then a keyword related in your niche such as “How To Get A Six Pack.”

You now have over 41 million videos to create content with.

Perhaps “The 100 Greatest Ab Workout Videos Online?”

Make sure that you add value to the post by watching the videos and making notes and writing what each video contains and the pros and cons.

This is a fast way to create great content that ranks

7. The Tool List Rocket Content Page

We all love Tools for our trades, and this makes for a great power page article.

In this post, Backlinko collected an incredible list of the best SEO tools and then created spectacular filter buttons within the content.

With 19,000 social media shares, you can certainly say that this article format works.

But when you look at the web we see examples in loads of niches:

This post by The Writing Cooperative compares the best online writing tools, and while it only received 8 backlinks, it brings in a decent amount of traffic.

Of all the Rocket content styles we have listed this is one of the most time consuming because you have to try each one, however, we have a super fast hack to get around this.

Step 1: Collect All The Data You Need

At this stage, you need to go broad and search for “niche” + tools in Google to bring you back pages of tools.

Your aim is to scour the first 2 pages and make a list.

Step 2: Visit Each Tool Page

This is slightly time-consuming but worth it, out of your list visit each page to learn more about the tool.

For example, check out this information from The Hemingway App page.

Step 3: Write The Key Points In A Fresh But Abbreviated Format

This is the equivalent of creating a micro sales page. You need to say what the tool does, who it is for, what they say the benefits are and of course the price.

You cannot copy and paste; this must be in your own words.

Step 4: Publish And Promote

Let the social media teams for these products know about your article and you might get shared online.

8. The Complete/Advanced Guide Rocket Content Page

We have left the best and most powerful Rocket content page format for last.

The Advanced or Complete Guide to any subject is the monster of content.

This page on Content Marketing by Neil Patel and Kathryn Aragon at QuickSprout might not generate massive amounts of traffic, but the size and scale have generated thousands of backlinks:

Others who have employed this tactic are Sprout Social with their excellent Ultimate Guide to Social Media.

Ultimate guides can take a lot of time, effort and money to make and there is no guarantee that you will see the pay off at the end.

All content needs to be promoted to gain results quickly.

But as we can see with this “Ultimate Guide to Piping Nozzles” you can use Ultimate Guides in a wide range of niches.

And when we look at the results, we see that they can be exceptional as this post generates over 1400 monthly visitors and ranks for 817 keywords with ease.

Now, let’s complete the story with the next chapter and advanced writing techniques.

To use the tool, start typing in the boxes, and a live preview will appear:

From there you can craft the perfect title.

Our tip is to aim between 50 and 60 characters.

So that is the click-through sorted, but how do you make sure they stay on the page?

We will cover this next.

How To Ensure Your Readers Stay Put

Dwell time is the amount of time a user stays on your page and as we have already said, the longer the dwell time, the better it is for SEO.

So how do you achieve this?

Here are our top tips.

1. Lead With Your Content

Most articles on the internet start with a huge image at the top.

Check out this post on fitness:

To read the 15 Tips, you first have to scroll down the page.

This is what is called keeping your content below the fold and is a no-no for content writing and web design.

If you look at a landing page specialist like Leadpages you can see just how essential it is to keep crucial information above the fold.

In their page, they have the menu, details of a free 14-day trial and also pricing plan details all above the fold.

It would be best if you looked at content with the same method.

Leading blogger Derek Halpern shows how it is done by diving straight into the content:

Mega-blogger Seth Godin has a similar approach by jumping straight into the content.

If you think about it, this makes sense.

You just earned the click to the article; it is now time to give the reader what they came for.

2. Create A Great Intro That Keeps The Reader On The Page

You can read a complete guide to writing introductions here, however, for this post let us focus on a type of introduction we did not mention in that post.

I call it The Elevator Drop Opening.

Have you ever been to Disneyland? I so you might have visited the Tower of Terror.

It is a ride where an elevator goes to the top of a tower and drops suddenly.

That is precisely what The Elevator Drop opening is all about.

You want their eyes dropping down the page onto your juicy content.

To do this, you will want your opening to be short and sweet.

Top writer Ash Ambirge uses short openings in her work:

Here she uses just a few lines.

Joshua Hardwick who is a writer for Ahrefs uses a super short introduction for his SEO articles as well.

This intro is written in a larger font.

He repeats this style with other posts:

Of course, how you write your introduction is entirely up to you.

This Tiny Buddha article has a whopping 23 lines of introduction.

Yet it delivers over 7,000 monthly visits to their site.

But writing an excellent introduction is tough (which is why we produced a guide), so our advice is to use The Elevator Drop Opening if you are looking to increase dwell time (and you are not a legend at writing introductions).

Here is how to write one:

First, write your main article.

This might sound counterproductive, but by creating the body of the article first, you will know exactly what you are going to teach them in the post.

Next, head back to the top and start to craft your intro.

Your aim is to get it down to a few lines as possible and should include:

1. What This Post Is About

2. Who This Post Is For

3. What They Will Learn

This post from Neil Patel at Quicksprout.com is an excellent example of nailing all the parts of a super quick Elevator Drop Opening.

He explains that the post is about what to do and what not to do with blogging.

He offers a content upgrade for people starting their blog (proof that newbie bloggers are in the right place)

And he then tells you that you will learn 11 things,

Once you have a super quick and relevant intro, the next stage is here.

3. How To Write SEO Articles That Gets Devoured Line By Line

Most people scan, read on the internet, it is because we are looking for things within the content that are useful for us.

With a traditional book, people used to flick pages, well with a web article you can’t do that.

The result is that people scan the content to find something that grabs their attention.

Your job is to suck the “scanners” in so they go back to the top and read your content word by word.

To help with this, I use a method I call The Doorman.

If you have ever been to a nightclub, you will have probably been looked up and down by a doorman.

They are looking at your clothes, if you are drunk or if you could be trouble.

And they judge you there and then.

Your reader is doing the same.

As they look your article up and down, they are seeing if it is worth getting into their minds.

There is some logic behind this; we are bombarded with requests to read all day. From WhatsApp messages to emails, our eyes and minds take a beating.

Your brain needs a way to establish if this is worth reading.

To do this, it scans the whole thing first.

Ok, so the Doorman Method is simple, you are going to flash some article brilliance at the reader, so they let you into “the club.”

You do this by using benefit and utility rich subheadings.

In the above example from an Ahrefs article, we can see a great example of a heavy utility subheading.

Neil Patel is another master at them;

Here he is saying read this and learn how to use audience reports for remarketing.

If you are someone who is interested in remarketing, then you know this post is for you.

By adding the subheaders into your content that grab the attention of the reader, you have a chance to pull them into the article and keep them on the page.

A very indepth and vast article, really helpful for the SEO beginners! Very neatly organised and a step-by-step approach helps a person understand the concepts easily. Really good examples are given in the form of images, which really dumbs it down for all! A complete package.

All of this theoretical knowledge, along with hands on practical exposure would help you become a SEO expert.

Wow really helpful post. i devoured every word. I’m still in the process of building a blog and really need to learn how to write articles that rank. I enjoyed the way you use examples and visuals. By the way how do you design the colored sections of your heading?

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